The latest film releases include Y2K, The Return, Get Away, and Nightbitch. Weighing in are Katie Walsh, film reviewer for the Tribune News Service and The Los Angeles Times, and Monica Castillo, freelance film critic and senior film programmer at the Jacob Burns Film Center.
Y2K
In this teen comedy/thriller set on New Year's Eve in 1999, an awkward boy named Danny (Jaeden Martell) pines after Laura (Rachel Zegler) at a house party, then the clock strikes midnight and their electronics revolt. This is the directorial debut for Kyle Mooney, who was on Saturday Night Live for 10 years.
Walsh: “It's a revisionist history of Y2K panic. … On the macro level, it's a mess. But on the micro level, on the really granular little observations about late 90s culture and music and teenage tribes and all of this stuff, I think it really, really succeeds. I just don't know if anyone other than people who are 40 years old are gonna get it.”
Castillo: “It is very much a nostalgic trip. I also really appreciated all the different subcultures they explore. It's great. Remember video stores? Remember how long it took us to get online [way] back when? But beyond that, I don't see a purpose or a message behind that novelty.”
The Return
Italian director Uberto Pasolini gives a modern retelling of Homer’s Odyssey, which chronicles the long return home of Greek hero Odysseus after the Trojan War. Ralph Fiennes plays Odysseus, and Juliette Binoche is his wife Penelope.
Castillo: “It does feel like a movie from another time. There's a stagey-ness quality to it and a stiltedness that I felt. It doesn't feel so modern in the way that we're used to movies and scenes flowing along. But this is Juliette Binoche. This is Ralph Fiennes. They're amazing. They're amazing together.”
Walsh: “There have not been many adaptations of The Odyssey that are set in ancient Greece. … It feels like it's building to something, and it does reach this bloody crescendo, but it doesn't quite break out of this stated dramatic register. … It feels very stripped away. I think the strength of it is that it sets you in this ancient time, and then it's filmed very simply, and I think it allows you to focus on the emotions that are happening in this return, the shame and the guilt that Odysseus feels having gone to war, the things that he's done, but then also the grief of his wife and family as they've been waiting for him.”
Get Away
Directed by Dutch filmmaker Steffen Haars, this follows the Smiths, a goofy British family on vacation on a remote Swedish island, where they encounter creepy rituals.
Walsh: “It's a folk horror riff about these unwitting Brits who go to this Swedish island. … Everyone keeps telling them, ‘Don't go, don't go.’ And they're almost so oblivious that you get frustrated with that … and it's very trope-y in that sense. I will say there is a big twist that happens halfway through the movie. … I think it just takes so long to get to the twist of it all that I was really frustrated with these characters, that by the time we got there, I was like, ‘I don't really care about these people. They're so dumb.’ And I didn't really buy them as a family either. … It's disposable and not that scary and not that funny.”
Castillo: “I think I enjoyed the twist a bit more. So I was able to stay on board and see it through to the bitter bloody end. … I did buy the family a bit more. I enjoyed the bumbling parents and the two siblings that hate each other, as trope-y as it was. It did take a while for it to click together and like, ‘Okay, but why are we following this particular family to this particular island with this strange ritual play?’ And I did appreciate that it's playing with the full-core trope, because you think things are going to go one way, and then zing, everything changes. In that sense, I did have a bit more fun, but it is forgettable. It would be not my favorite vacation.”
Nightbitch
In this adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s 2021 novel of the same name, Amy Adams plays a stay-at-home mom who feels trapped by her newfound domesticity. She transforms into a dog, which is supposed to represent a lost sense of self she feels as a new mother. Adams also produced the film.
Castillo: “She does, actually, in the movie, turn into a dog, and gets in touch with her feral self … and [is] experiencing the isolation of motherhood and the desperation she's been [in]. … I enjoyed this movie. I did wish it went a little deeper, and I thought maybe it was a little tame for a movie called Nightbitch. Maybe I wanted a little bit more body horror, or a little bit more fangs and fury when it comes to talking about this topic. Because once I really get some of my girlfriends dealing with these feelings, talking, it gets very emotional, very visceral at times.”
Walsh: “The resolution felt very pat and flat for me. … I think it brings up a lot of issues about domestic labor, and motherhood, and identity, guilt, and marriages, relationships, husbands who don't know how to care for a kid, and also issues like perimenopause and your changing female body. She comes to this crisis, and then it's just like, ‘Well, everything's fixed now.’”